Since our first broadcast more than four years ago, my vision has always been for this series to be a community effort. Bringing in partners and hosts with a serious commitment to poetry was an important step in that direction. They have brought new and established poets to our global stage. And of course, none of this would have mattered without you, our enthusiastic viewers.

Now, I am pleased to say that Transatlantic Poetry is ready to take another big step forward by welcoming two new curators, John Gosslee and Malik Crumpler, to handle all aspects of programming live poetry readings in 2018. John is based in Fairfax, Virginia in the US, and Malik is based in Paris, France. Together they are connected to a wealth of poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Permit me to introduce them to you briefly.

John Gosslee is a poet and editor. He runs several literary presses and has been a succesful longtime host of previous broadcasts. His latest little book is Analog (Unicorn Press, 2017), he has an art book of contemporary poetry redactions called Out of Context (Press Otherwise, 2017), he’s the editor of the survey book 50 Contemporary Women Artists (Schiffer, 2018), and a small new book of poetry Pick the Stars to Work (Nomadic Press, 2018).

Malik Crumpler is a poet, rapper, and editor that’s released several albums and five books of poetry. He’s the co-editor of Paris Lit Up, The Opiate, Those That This and Visceral Brooklyn. He curates and host Poets Live and The Wordists in Paris, France.

Of course, I will still be available “behind the scenes” to support John, Malik, and our hosts and partners, but am delighted to see the series continue under fresh direction. In particular, I am looking forward to experiencing the new poets they will bring to the series.

It has been a privilege to hold the focus for curating programming these past four years, but many hands do indeed make light work, and so it is time to pass the curation of the series into John and Malik’s capable hands.

Neil Aitken is the author of Babbage’s Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017) and The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga Press, 2008), which received the Philip Levine Prize. His chapbook Leviathan (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016) was recently awarded a 2017 Elgin Award in the poetry chapbook category. A former computer games programmer and a proud Kundiman poetry fellow, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. His poems have been published in American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Dialogist, Ninth Letter, The Normal School, The Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals. He is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review, curator of Have Book Will Travel, and co-director of De-Canon: A Visibility Project.

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review and Prairie Schooner.

TRANSATLANTIC Poetry is a unique community of poets writing in (or translating to) English from the US, UK, Europe, and beyond. We host an innovative series of readings that bring poets together from across the globe using YouTube Live Streaming technology. Robert Peake is an American-born poet living near London and creator of the Transatlantic Poetry reading series. His collection The Knowledge is available from Nine Arches Press.

Mary Jean Chan is a poet from Hong Kong. She won the 2016 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition (ESL), and has been shortlisted for the 2016 London Magazine Poetry Prize, the 2016 Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition and the 2016 Resurgence Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Review, The London Magazine, Callaloo Journal, The Rialto, Ambit Magazine, Bare Fiction Magazine, The Scores, and elsewhere. As a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, Mary Jean’s article ‘Towards a Poetics of Racial Trauma: Lyric Hybridity in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen’ is forthcoming from The Journal of American Studies (Spring 2017). Mary Jean is currently a Co-Editor at Oxford Poetry.

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and out now from BOA Editions. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The Poetry Review, and The Best American Poetry. A Kundiman and Lambda Literary fellow, he is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. [Photo: Jess X. Chen]

Kundiman is dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American literature. Kundiman offers a comprehensive spectrum of arts programming that gives writers opportunities to inscribe their own stories, transforming and enriching the American literary landscape. Kundiman sees literature not only as vehicle for cultural expression but also as an instrument for political dialogue and self-empowerment. R.A.Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (U. Nebraska Press, 2014). New writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Prac Crit, and The Wolf. His many honours include fellowships from Kundiman and The Asian American Literary Review. He lives in Brooklyn and London. [Photo: Rachel Eliza Griffiths]

Loren Kleinman is an American-born poet and writer with roots in New Jersey. Her writing explores the results of love and loss, and how both themes affect an individual’s internal and external voice. Her poetry appeared in The New York Times, Drunken Boat, The Moth, Domestic Cherry, Blue Lake Review, Columbia Journal, Stony Thursday Anthology (Arts Council Ireland) LEVURE LITTÉRAIRE, Nimrod, Wilderness House Literary Review, Narrative Northeast, Writer’s Bloc, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Paterson Literary Review (PLR), Resurgence (UK), HerCircleEzine and Aesthetica Annual. She was the recipient of the Spire Press Poetry Prize (2003), was a 2000, 2003, and 2015 Pushcart Prize nominee, and was a 2004 Nimrod/Pablo Neruda Prize finalist for poetry.Her collection of poetry include Flamenco Sketches, The Dark Cave Between My Ribs, Breakable Things and Stay with Me Awhile. Her debut novel, This Way to Forever released with Evatopia Press late August 2016. She recently finished a memoir The Woman with a Million Hearts published by BlazeVOX, and is currently working on a screenplay called Self, Help. She is the co-founder of National Translation Month, a month-long celebration of writing in translation during the month of September.

Award-winning poet and author Suzi Q. Smith lives with her brilliant daughter in Denver, Colorado. In addition to working as a teaching artist in Denver, Suzi Q. has toured the United States for over a decade. Among the most well-known performing poets in the country, she has shared stages with Nikki Giovanni, Talib Kweli, the late Gil Scott Heron, and many more over the years. Her work has appeared in Union Station Magazine, Suspect Press, Muzzle Magazine, Malpais Review, Peralta Press, and more. She currently serves as the Executive Director of Poetry Slam, Inc. and as a Partner Artist with Youth On Record, and an Advisor to Denver Minor Disturbance Youth Poetry Slam.

At The Inkwell, founded in 2013, is a New York City-based supporter of published writers through features, book reviews and readings. Founder Monique Antonette Lewis created At The Inkwell to help authors gain exposure in an increasingly crowded literary market. Live readings through the series are held in Denver, CO; London; New York; San Francisco; Seattle, WA; and Richmond, VA.

Monique Antonette Lewis is the founder of At The Inkwell, a literary reading series located in major U.S. cities and London. She is an annual reader for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. A former board member of the New York Writers Workshop, she taught fiction workshops in Manhattan and Brooklyn. She was also the fiction editor for City Lit Rag. Her flash fiction story “You’re Cursed” was recently published by PoetryBay (Fall/Winter 2016). Her essays have appeared in Fused Society and the digital storytelling project, The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste. In 2015, she was a featured reader for This is My Brave, a national storytelling series, in New York City. Monique has more than a decade of journalism experience and is an editor for Mergermarket, a global online financial news service, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse and contributes travel essays for The Huffington Post. Her articles have appeared in Forbes and the Financial Times. Monique received her MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, and a B.A. in Journalism from Colorado State University. Monique lives in Denver.

Vinita Agrawal is an award-winning Mumbai-based poet and author of Words Not Spoken (Brown Critique/Sampark) and The Longest Pleasure (Finishing Line Press, USA) and The Silk Of Hunger (AuthorsPress, Delhi). She is Senior Editor for The Woman, Inc., a website dedicated to women facing domestic abuse. Recipient of the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award USA, 2015, Rædleafpoetry award, Wordweavers award, All India Poetry award, Hour Of Writes Award, her poems have appeared in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Mithila Review, Open Road Review, Stockholm Literary Review, Poetry Pacific, Mascara Literary Review, and other national and international journals. Her poems have been anthologised in compilations from Australia and Israel. She was co judge for the AsianCha poetry contest 2015. She has read at SAARC events in Delhi and Agra at the U.S. Consulate, Hyderabad, at Delhi for Delhi Poetree, at Mumbai for Cappuccino Readings and for the Maharashtra state literary body.

Jennifer Robertson is a contemporary Indian poet, critic and independent curator living in Mumbai. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in American Book Review, Scroll and the Telegraph. Her poems have appeared in The Missing Slate, 40 Under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation poetry published by Poetrywala and in the Urban Myths and Legends anthology published by The Emma Press. Jennifer is the convener for literary events hosted by the The PEN-All India Centre. Her first poetry manuscript was chosen for the Editor’s choice award by The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective and will be published in 2016.

RædLeaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts publishes The Poetry Mail and funds the annual RL Poetry Award. Linda Ashok is the 2017 Charles Wallace Fellow at the University of Chichester. Her poems have appeared in several publications, online and in print, including The McNeese Review, Axolotl, Skylight 47, Vinyl, The Big Bridge Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poets, Mascara Literary Review, Entropy and others. In 2016, Linda’s work was nominated for Best of the Net by Expound. She is the Founder/President of RædLeaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts and sponsors the annual RL Poetry Award (est. 2013).

John Clegg’s most recent book is Holy Toledo! (Carcanet, 2016). An earlier collection, Antler (Salt, 2012), received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2013. He works as a bookseller in London. At present he is editing for publication the letters of poet and translator Christopher Middleton.

Don Share is the editor of Poetry. His most recent books are Wishbone (Black Sparrow), Union (Eyewear), and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions); he has also edited a critical edition of Basil Bunting’s poems for Faber & Faber. His translations of Miguel Hernández, awarded the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize and Premio Valle Inclán, were published in a revised and expanded edition by New York Review Books, and appeared in an earlier edition from Bloodaxe Books. His other books include Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), Squandermania (Salt), and The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of POETRY Magazine (University of Chicago Press), a sequel to which will appear in 2017. His work at Poetry has been recognised with three National Magazine Awards for editorial excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and a Community of Literary Magazines and Presses “Firecracker” Award for Best Poetry Magazine. He received a VIDA “VIDO” Image Award for his contributions to American literature and literary community.

TRANSATLANTIC Poetry is a unique community of poets writing in (or translating to) English from the US, UK, Europe, and beyond. We host an innovative series of readings that bring poets together from across the globe using YouTube Live Streaming technology. Robert Peake is an American-born poet living near London and creator of the Transatlantic Poetry reading series. His collection The Knowledge is available from Nine Arches Press.

Malik Ameer Crumpler is a poet, fiction writer, rapper and music producer that’s released many albums, short films and five books of poetry. He founded Satori Ideas Media and co-founded the literary journals: Madmens Calling, Visceral Brooklyn and Those That This. He is the new co-curator of Poets Live in Paris, France, has an MFA in Creative Writing from LIU Brooklyn and performs regularly in Paris and New York.

Leah Umansky is a poet and teacher in New York. She is the author of the dystopian-themed chapbook, Straight Away the Emptied World (Kattywompus Press 2016), the Mad Men Inspired chapbook, Don Dreams and I Dream (Kattywompus Press 2014) and the full-length collection Domestic Uncertainties (Blazevox 2012). Her collection The Barbarous Century was shortlisted for the 2016 Sexton Prize by Eyewear Publishing. She received her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Poetry Magazine, Slice Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Faerie Magazine, and The Boston Review. She is the Host and Curator of the COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her Game of Thrones inspired poems have also been translated into Norwegian by Beijing Trondheim. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times (online), USA Today’s Pop Candy, Coldfront Magazine, and The Huffington Post. More at her site www.LeahUmansky.com and follow her at @Lady_Bronte.

Fjords Review is a twice-yearly print journal of poetry, prose, and photography. In addition to its companion website, Fjords is available in over 300 bookstores in the United States and Canada. John Gosslee is the editor of Fjords Review. His collection Blitzkrieg Body combines poetry, imagery, and performance art.